Hong Jin Young’s agency has addressed accusations that the singer plagiarized her master’s thesis, denying all claims.

On November 5, news outlet Kukmin Ilbo raised suspicions that Hong Jin Young’s master’s thesis from Chosun University had been plagiarized. According to the report, Hong Jin Young’s master’s thesis “Research Regarding Cultural Content Industry Trends Through the Korean Wave,” submitted to Chosun University’s Department of Trade, recorded a score of 74 percent on the plagiarism review site “Copy Killer” after it was tested by an anonymous informant.

“Copy Killer” is a well-known plagiarism review program in Korea. According to Kukmin Ilbo’s report, out of the 556 sentences in Hong Jin Young’s thesis, the program detected 124 sentences with more than six words that matched other sources, as well as 365 sentences suspected to be plagiarized.

In response to these accusations, Hong Jin Young’s agency commented that they would look into the truth and release a statement afterwards.

Later in the day, her agency denied all claims in an official statement, which reads as follows:

Hello, this is IMH Entertainment.

We are here to give our official stance on reports from today involving accusations that singer Hong Jin Young plagiarized her master’s thesis.

Hong Jin Young diligently researched and wrote her master’s thesis ‘Research Regarding Cultural Content Industry Trends Through the Korean Wave’ for Chosun University’s Department of Trade.

Regarding the claims in the reports made today that the plagiarism score surpasses 74 percent, we want to present the opinion of the professor who was in charge of reviewing Hong Jin Young’s master’s thesis at the time.

According to the professor, Hong Jin Young’s master’s thesis was under review in 2009. At the time, it was typical to have lots of annotations of both quoted citations and references and it was a period where many quotes were required to pass the thesis review.

Additionally, ‘Copy Killer’ is a system that began obligatory use in universities beginning 2015 and is meant to filter out submissions with more than 50 percent plagiarized content. It is inevitable that a thesis that was reviewed in 2009 when the system did not exist would come out with a high score.

Since there can be misunderstandings, we want to deliver the opinion of the professor who concludes that you cannot view it as plagiarism. Outside of the quoted citations and references, we confirmed once again with Hong Jin Young herself that the artist did not plagiarize in the research of her thesis.

The review system was flawed at the time but we want to convey that the thesis at hand is Hong Jin Young’s own creation that does not plagiarize any other works.

Thank you.

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Top Photo Credit: Xportsnews

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